How Bronson Pinchot stopped his ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ character from being a one-note gay cliché

queerty.com:

Beverly Hills Cop franchise is back with Eddie Murphy reprising the titular role for the new Netflix sequel, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.The 1984 original made Murphy an international star, earned more than $230 million at the box office, and was the highest-grossing film in the U.S.

that year. It also introduced the world to Bronson Pinchot’s now-classic character Serge, a flamboyant art gallery assistant with a foreign accent that has trouble pronouncing Murphy’s character’s name.Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.While only on-camera for less than two minutes, Serge became an instant fan-favorite character and the scene is one of the film’s most quoted.Although Serge was absent from the 1987 sequel Beverly Hills Cop II, Pinchot (who went on to obtain even more fame for eight seasons as Balki in the ABC series Perfect Strangers) reprised the scene-stealing role in 1994’s Beverly Hills Cop III.

However, in the 10 years since the original, Serge had moved on from the art world to open up a pop-up weapons shop. Gays know how to work those transferable skills!Despite the career-change, Serge still couldn’t pronounce Axel correctly.Now on the eve of the release of the fourth film in the franchise, Pinchot has opened up about the problematic origins of Serge and how he worked to make him more than just a tired gay cliché.In a new clip, the 65-year-old divulged how the character was originally not named Serge, supposed to be American, and devastatingly good-looking.

After joking that the last part almost made him not audition for the role, Pinchot said producers told him they couldn’t figure how to make the character funny.But right off the bat, Pinchot saw what was wrong with how Serge was written.“He was a real garden variety, typical early ’80s gay character that only existed to be swatted like a fly,” the actor said in a video posted on TMZ.